This thread always makes me laugh when it gets bumped.
Btw, to Peanut's thought that now the schools have the donations due to athletics and now we can just stop the programs and keep the money...yeah, there's these accounting things called "restricted gifts" and "donor intent" that auditors and the IRS actually take quite seriously.
Also, the very suggestion that now the money has been donated so let's just cease the programs and keep the money? Shows he's also got that ethical base we like to see in our future attorneys.

Also there's this thing called "the future." Stop the programs, and see your donation stream dry up.

there's too many posts to respond to and i'm on my macbook at a cigar lounge so i'm just going to make a few statements that should address most of the issues raised here.

1.) most institutions lose money on athletic programs. this is a fact. i can go find the proof when i get home, but the guy on the front page posted a good few links, too. the confusing part about it is that these institutions do not report things correctly, and they fudge the numbers to make it look as though they do profit from it. they don't. very few places profit from it.

2.) piobaire, no, LSU doesn't make money. i'm not one of the lazy/uneducated college students of which you speak. where do i get my information? why, none other than the president of the LSU system. the president.

Michigan's bowl game invite to Tempe, Ariz., last season was a loss both on the field and in the checkbook.

The U-M athletic department spent $2.01 million on its trip the 2013 Buffalo Wild Wings Bowl, according to expense documents obtained by MLive.com via a public records request. Michigan came close to breaking even in expenditures, but wasn't quite there.

Ultimately, the Buffalo Wild Wings Bowl left U-M roughly $132,000 in the red.

The Big Ten Conference gave the university $1.875 million to offset the cost of travel and other expenses associated with the game, according to Michigan associate athletic director for media and public relations Dave Ablauf. But Michigan's overall expenditure of nearly $2.01 million left it with $131,861 in out-of-pocket expenses.